Here is Citroën's first stab at an SUV - the "new, friendly face of 4x4 motoring", according to its makers. And fair enough: most 4x4s do appear to be fizzing with aggressive paranoia, in varying degrees, all the way through to the pinch-faced Mercedes ML, which, if you approach it closely enough, can almost be heard saying, "Step away from the car," through clenched teeth. And maybe this new, seven-seat C-Crosser does just about seem to be raising a smile with its chunky chevrons and thin-lipped grille.

Nevertheless, before you rush to throw your arms round its capacious rear end, you may still want to ask yourself, "What is Citroën - the home of strangely embraceable French eccentricity and mass-produced loopiness - doing competing in the soulless, status-driven world of the armour-plated school shuttle?"

Well, "Hoping to make lots of money" would, of course, be one plausible answer. The swanky 4x4 sector now accounts for 7.5% of all new cars sold - meaning that at least seven of every 100 new cars on the road, will be (or will appear to be) suitable for driving across a rutted field. If you had predicted that eventuality as recently as 15 or 20 years ago, people would have laughed in your face and driven away in a Renault 5.

But there it is. So here's another suburban family car offering, apparently without irony, a dial enabling you to switch from two-wheel drive to four-wheel drive for, presumably, those trickier speed bumps. The C-Crosser is, though, "a responsible alternative", which "minimises its impact on the environment". Hmm. By this, Citroën seems to mean that, if you buy the quite noisy but stable 2.2 diesel-engined version that we tested, your car will bring the world to a rolling boil less quickly than other SUVs with petrol engines.

It is also advanced, as a token of the C-Crosser's heartening greenness, that its engine will happily accept 30% bio-diesel, which, again, sounds excitingly wholesome, except that 30% bio-diesel is a fuel that, it's only a slight exaggeration to say, you can't buy anywhere, unless you make it at home yourself, with soap and the morning's Weetabix scrapings.

However green at heart it is, your C-Crosser will still bulge unhelpfully over the lip of your supermarket parking space, and its sculpted bumpers will continue to give every impression of having been placed at the point of maximum danger to the heads of the broadest possible range of small children - that other quaint SUV design touch. "Impact on the environment" takes more forms than simply what is unleashed into the atmosphere every time you fire up the engine, though few car companies would admit as much these days, so much has the debate been politically narrowed.

Of course, only the insentient would deny the luxury of those yards of shoulder and leg room, or the pleasures of that lofted driving position, which is broad enough to afford a view of several neighbouring counties. If only the C-Crosser's expression could work harder. What it's trying to say is, "I'm not like those other, bad SUVs. I'm one of the new breed of good SUVs." But it's an awful lot for a car's face to communicate.